I am hoping you will be able to help bring quick and loud attention to this appalling behavior in 546 Roosevelt Landings. Attached are two pictures of fires set this week in the 3rd floor of 546 Main Street. The smaller one was set earlier in the week

and the larger one was set last night.

I am not sure if this is happening on other floors but this is horribly embarrassing that people are consistently engaging in this behavior.

Roosevelt Landings is already in a state where I am too embarrassed to invite friends over because I am not sure what they may encounter in the hallways (dog waste, trash, people smoking in the elevators, and now open fires). I hope that you may be able to bring more attention to this so that PSD or UA will actually ramp up the security in this building since Roosevelt Landings is already the armpit of Roosevelt Island.

PSD does nothing! There are people sleeping in the staircases as well. I was doing laundry, and there were two people, female and male sleeping in the laundry room. Looked at me like I was in the wrong doing my laundry while they slept.

RIOC Public Safety Director Jack McManus replied to my inquiry:

We are aware of these incidents and are deploying our resources accordingly. There have been no arrests to report at this time.

Roosevelt Landings management distributed this flyer

to residents this afternoon advising of a small number of recent fires in the AVAC garbage rooms and offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the identification and conviction of those persons responsible for the fires.

The safety of our residents is our utmost priority. These incidents are clearly unacceptable and we are taking immediate action to address it. We have distributed notices to every unit and throughout the building offering a $1,000 reward to anyone who has information leading to the identification and conviction of those responsible, and are looking into additional measures to reinforce safety at Roosevelt Landings.

16
comments
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douglas
said...

Lest we not forget the elevator buttons being glued down rendering them inoperable, as well as the stairwells being used as urinals. If UA is so concerned about the safety of its residents then why are our doors always wide open?

Purchasing additional cameras is a minor expenditure relative to the immense wealth of Brookfield. The block-long East-West hallways are the equivalent of streets, mostly un-patrolled. Can they at least be monitored by cameras?

It is very distressing to hear that arson fires are being set on the RL premises by vandals. Even if the perps are not caught in the act, since PSD does not patrol round-the-clock, footage collected by cameras could help to identify the culprits and assist in their prosecution.

The basic requirement to ensure resident safety is locked doors. Are the emergency exits being propped open - so residents/visitors toward the Eastern side of the complex do not have to walk a block back & forth to Main St to exit/enter the building? Are the front doors on Main still being occasionally vandalized? All of these problems could be addressed if Brookfield invested the (for them) modest amount that would be needed to construct lobby door stations and hired 24/7 door attendants for all the Main St entrances of RL. RL is a market-rate rental now. Doesn't it deserve market-rate amenities/security?

On the nose. And yes - doors are always propped open. We were once informed by the RL management that safety of their residents is top concern, yet when concerns were voiced; RL management interrupted over and over to say they were doing their job and everything was okay.

Check out how rich Brookfield is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookfield_Office_Properties. To improve RL would be a mere pittance to Brookfield. Why not write directly to them since UA is generally unresponsive?

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That is not exactly true. Most of the residents would not have qualified for project housing when they were admitted under M-L. Most were regular working-class residents who had to accept Sec 8 once the building privatized and the LL decided to double or triple rents. The alternative would have been mass evictions - politically impossible in NYC, especially in a neighborhood like RI.

Since the LL is collecting market-rate rents from the approximately 90% of the building that is not in the LAP, the LL can certainly afford to implement door stations, more cameras, etc.

No - many still live there. Sec 8 limits the renter's outlay to 1/3 of their income payable to rent, the rest of the rent is paid by the Sec 8 voucher. However, there are income limits. If a renter is no longer eligible for the voucher then they must pay the entire rent by themselves - the market rate rent, which is of course, un-affordable for a working class family.

The rents in roosevelt landings go for 2100 to i am told 4200 so if a person is getting sec 8 why would they want to make more income than pay those rents i dont blame them for having no desire to make more income, only in america what a mess

At the time, RIOC didn't try to get the LL to agree to a less profitable exit. The building privatized - once it was finished with M-L the LL raised the rents, doubled/tripled them. RIOC didn't try to hold the ground lease over the LL's head to make him accept a less profitable exit - such as extending RS to the tenants, rather than allowing him to double or triple the rents. The voucher program enabled the LL to clean up upon exit - realize huge profits. You can thank the State of NY for enabling this cozy situation whereby the State gets the Fed gov to enable LL greed by arranging for the Fed vouchers. Had it not been for the vouchers, there would have been mass evictions. That was politically unacceptable thus the vouchers were issued.

I doubt if they have no desire to make more money, but if making more money means your rent triples, then making more money is "un-affordable." Yes, it's a paradox, and a strange position to be in. Unless the renters make 3 x as much as they are currently earning, they will be rent burdened if they make a little bit more money and become ineligible for the voucher support.

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